The transcript which
follows is of a taped interview with Glen Harvey, age about 94, and Judia Harvey,
age about 91. This interview, which was conducted about 1996, was submitted by W. A. Harvey
[Mrauthor@aol.com].

FAMILY HISTORY IN LOUISIANA AND ROBERTSON COUNTY

G. (Glen)

J. (Aunt Judia)

B. (Bill)

B. Now, you said that Grandaddy
Harvey told you that our people came from Scotland??

J. Some of them did.

G. Glasgow….Poppa said that’s where
his people was from.

B. Where did they come to from
there?? N. Carolina somewhere??

G. I don’t know where all they’ve
been or anything about it.

B. Yeh..hang on a minute now
(Adjusting tape recorder).

G. Well, the whole story was….I don’t
know too much about it….but Poppa told me that one time his Uncle come by with a
wagon caravan.

They lived near Winfield, Louisiana,
and Uncle Jim (Poppa called him) and they stayed a day or two … or awhile …
there with his daddy.

Uncle Jim Harvey, he was on his way
to Red River county Texas, which is up near Paris Texas, and that’s all I know
about it, or nearly all.

Now I know that Grandma told me that
Poppa looked exactly like Grand pa. Now that’s doing some pretty good looking,
now wasn’t it Sis??

J. Uh huh.

B. Now it was the Granddaddy that he
looked like that went north and fought for the Union Army, right??

G. He’s the guy! His name was EVAN
…Not Ivan nor Irving…but ee vin.

B. And he married a woman that was a
Davis ??

J. Yeah.

G. Yeah, he married a woman that was
a Davis.

B. She was Jeff Davis’ first cousin?
Or cousin??

G. Now we won’t put that in there…….

B. Ok…cause it may not be, huh ???

G. Well, I just don’t know too much
about it. I just don’t want to make a statement that wouldn’t be reasonable. But
I was of that opinion, wasn’t you Judia??

J. Oh, she was !!! (kin to Jeff
Davis) I’ve heard her say that it was no great honor to be kin to a

TRAITOR!!….She spoke of him as a
traitor…(SEE FOOTNOTE A)

B. She came from up in Mississippi
somewhere then, huh??

J. Somewhere around there.

G. Uh huh.

B. Was she the one that had the
brother that was in the….(Confederate) or was that Grandma Harveys’

(mother)

G. That was Grandma Watson. Mama was
a Watson before she married my Papa!

J. That Holbrook that’s the uh

B. State Senator??

G. His name was Holbrooks.

J. No One of the…No, one of Clintons
advisors about about…something…I don’t …he went over there

and tried to get the Serbs ….and
the….

B. Oh that guy, yeah I didn’t even
get the connection with the Holbrooks.

G. What was that??

B. Well, there was a guy named
Holbrook that went over to try to mediate between Serbs and the Bosnians some
time ago and Aunt Judia said they were related. (SEE FOOTNOTE A)

G . Well, any way…Grandma…I went and
spent the day with Grandma Watson…a Holbrook, and she told me that when she was
a “little girl” that they was coming to Texas. When they was at Natchez
Mississippi, her brother (In Confederate uniform) rode up on a horse. Him and
Pappy (as she called him) conferred or talked a while. And directly he
said,“Well Paw, I’m gonna have to go” and he says, “I’ll join y’all in Texas.”
I don’t know where they was coming to in Texas but it was possibly Robertson
County.

J. Uh huh. That’s where it was.

G. Anyway, Grandma sat there….and she
was 86 years old then (1937??)…and she said, He come by and he said, “Callie,
don’t cry now. When I come to Texas, I’ll bring you a doll.”…..and she said,
“And I never saw him again.” And she broke down and cried….

That’s how vivid a memory she had of
her brother telling her his last goodbye.

B. That was about the time….in the
Civil War….

G. Wait a minute now…..(she said) as
they drove on, they heard the guns from the battle at…

B. Vicksburg??

G. No it wasn’t Vicksburg…..Yeh it
was one of those battles that they was fighting, and they heard the guns from
it…..LOTS OF GUNS.

B. So they went into Robertson County
about the time of the Civil War??

G. During the Civil War….got in
there, and Grandpa (Holbrook) settled in..

He had a little slave boy that he had
brought along, and Grandma (Holbrook ) Watson said that this little

slave boy was big enough to make a
swing for her and things like that. And later on, when we was big kids,

…great big kids..we moved back to
Robertson County, and this slave boy, George Henly was his name …

J. He’s buried in a white cemetery…

G. Yeh. He was there, and he went
from cousin to cousin and all of them recognized George, and took him in. He was
part of the bunch. He told me one day, “Your Grandpa learned me how to work”….
He didn’t teach him, he “learned” him. I don’t guess he knew how to read or
write, I don’t know….cause they didn’t teach slaves that then. And anyway….Old
George was a welcomed person to every one there…..

B. What town was this close to??

G. Well, Franklin….it was a
community…Shiloh Community…that’s east of Franklin about 14 miles. And we
uh….when somebody asks me where I was born, I say, well, I was born in Franklin
right back of the depot 15 miles.

B. You were born in Franklin Texas
then..?

G. I was born in Robertson
County….and in the Shiloh Community…and in the same house my mother was born
in, I think….Grace was later born in it…..

B. Well, where was Uncle Toyn born??

G. He was born in Louisiana
somewhere.

J. I think about like …..

G. Lowhorn(SP)??Lowhorn is above
Castor about two or six miles. (1900)

B. Then Grandpa Harvey must have come
wandering thru Robinson County when he met Grandma??

WERE a Rounder!! He’d get on his
horse and disappear….be gone for a year or two. But when he got that little ole
16 year old gal down there in Robertson County, she showed him a thing or two!!!

B. Penned him down some, huh??

G. Yeh, but he still….he still… he
showed the first moving pictures in the state of Texas.

B. Well, what did he do for a living
in Robertson County.??

J. Anything.

G. He worked at different farms for
awhile and things like that. At one time he worked in the state asylum at ……. Terrell. That’s where he got crippled…

B. Crippled by ….how??

G. Old gal stepped on his foot when
he was dancing with her … one of the crazy girls.

J. I didn’t hear about that one.

G. Stepped on his big toe…broke it….
Any how, that’s just some of the things that happened in our family.

HICO, LOUISIANA IS NOT LOST

This is the Louisiana part of the
tape made by Glen Harvey and Judia Harvey several years ago. During the tape,
they referred to “Hico” Lousiana as being where their own Grandmother is buried.
I couldn’t find any such town in Louisiana, and thought I was not hearing the
tape correctly, but Bob has confirmed that the town where the cemetery is
located is really Hico…a few miles out of Dubach, La.

In any event, many things of interest
to me are told in this portion of the tape….

Glen Harvey has just completed
telling a story about John Harvey getting his big toe broke while dancing with
an inmate at the Terrell, Texas asylum, where he worked for a while…

TAPE RESUMES

G. By the way, did I tell you that
Bob come by and said, “Daddy, I’m going over to North La. to take a pump over
there… do you feel like riding with me?” Well, it was before I got sick, and I
felt alright so I got in with him. And we drove up there. And he said, “What
side of the country are y’all from ?” and I said, “well, I had some kinfolks at
Hico”…and he said well, we are going right by Hico. And I said alright. Well, me and Grace had gone up there
to and visited Grandmas’ grave…you remember that , Judia?? {(Hattie) Grace Harvey Ford}

J. Uh, huh.

G. But me and Bob was coming thru
there, and he said….. and we drove into the town of Hico, and I said

Turn here on this street…that might
be the way I want to go. We turned and went down that way and I said, well, I
guess I just don’t know how to find the place. Didn’t pay enough attention. I
said, “I’d like to show you my grandmothers grave if I could.” Well, we drove
down there and directly we come to a church on the wrong side of the road, but
just as we got past that church there was a road that turned to the left, and it
went right in front of the church. And it began to look like that church. I
said, “Stop here Bob and lets go out there and look.”

G. We started out thru there and we
got thru the gate, and it was just a clear as mud to me then. I said, “My
grandmas’ grave is right over there. “ Well, he went over and looked at it, and
he said that’s her alright. And right by her was her daughter Lucindy…wasn’t
that her name, Lucinda??

J. Aunt Lu??

G. Aunt Lu…

J. It was Lowesa??…Louisa…Louisa

G. I don’t know what it was, but any
how. (Tape interrupted here for discussion of change from the purchase of
hamburgers….)

J. Do you remember a bunch came to
see us named Tolbert?

G. O yeh…Jeff Tolbert.

J. And Pace…Seneca Pace- I don’t know
if I’m pronouncing it right.

G. I remember them coming to the
house very well…and he was a first cousin of Poppas.

J. One of Pappas Aunts married a
Pace, and one married a Parrish….don’t you remember Grandma used to talk about
Parrish!!

G. She (his grandma) said that her
momma was out there washing one day, and Parrish had come. And he had just a
bunch of no good dogs…and there was a little rail fence around there, about so
high, she said.

Wasn’t very high.

G. Any way grandma….her mama was
upset over it and she was griping about the dogs. And he said,

“Missus DAVIS, I will get my dogs OUT
of your way!!” and he grabbed one of ‘em by the front legs, and carried him over
and throwed him over that fence and come back and got the others and throwed
THEM, too!!

G. One time…. He was the black sheep,
I think. And he said…Aunt Fannie…wasn’t that her name…

Grandmas sister??

J. No. Aunt Sarah..(Parrishs’ wife
??)

G. Said… Sarah. He said something to
her, and then he said, “I think we shall PERISH to death!! In fact,

I KNOW we shall!!”

And Aunt Sarah just turned around and
said, (singing) “I’m going where my troubles will be over…”

J. And one of them (Grandmas
sisters??) had a child that was dying with some fever or something, and they
were taking care of it. It was one of Grandmas’ nieces or something. And she
said they went and woke him (Parrish) up, and said, “The child has died.” And
said he come in there with sleep in his eyes… just feeling his way….he glanced
at the kid and said,

“Yep, she’s a goner alright.” And
Grandma hated his guts.

G. He wasn’t much of a hit, Parrish
wasn’t. Grandma didn’t like him, I know that.

B. What was his last name??

G. Parrish was his last name.

J. Parrish and Tolbert and Pace.

G. They are all surnames.

G. Poppas’ sister married a Tolbert.

J. No Poppas’ sister married a
preacher named Elias White…Grandmas’ sister married a Tolbert.

G. Her name was Fannie (Harvey)(
White)

J. Aunt Fannie… she had Will and Joe.

G. Will and Joe White and they was as
fine a boys as you’d ever want to know…and I just wonder what ever become of
them.

B. That was around Hico, La ??

G. No that was down close to Caster
,(SP) La. but I don’ t know more than a goose anything about them. But we love
to see Joe and Will come to see us because they were such fine men.

B. Well, didn’t you tell me a story
one time about Grandpa- or one of our relatives- camping out and John Wesley
Hardin rode in and had coffee with them or something??

G. I didn’t tell that story..

J. That’s in that Bill Brett
story…Bob Hardin…..

G. That’s in …JOHN WESLEY HARDIN… the
story of John Wesley Hardin. It’s in that book. And John Harvey was out there.
He’d (left camp) and gone down to water the horses. It coulda been him. There
was a spring down there, and he got down there and there was a fortune teller
down there. And this fortune teller…Poppa told him that they had John Wesley
Harding taking him back to stand trial… and this ole boy come up there and told
Wes’ fortune. Told him he wouldn’t hang…..

J. Well…Robert Wesley Hardin is
buried right there by Grandpa Watson and Uncle Polk Anderson. You know…the
cemetery….

B. You mean in Robertson County……..

BACK TO ROBERTSON COUNTY

J. Robert Wesley Hardin married
Mommas’ first cousin.

B. We called him Uncle Bob, but he
was a cousin, but we called him Uncle.

J. Emma.

G. He married Emma Anderson, which
was mothers first cousin. And they had a passle of children.

J. Well, I don’t think the Andersons
were much ahead of Wes Hardin. (See FOOTNOTE B)

G. Judia, I want to tell you
something…they had a boy named Guy that was about our age. We used to go down
there to see him once in a while, and he would come to see us. One day, Guy was
telling us about his Daddy. He said…now I’m not bragging or nothing like that,
but Papa killed that man…

J. What??

G. Killed that man…got in a fight and
killed him…

but of course he got out of it…. He
had just killed a man- He hadn’t stole a hog or nothing like that!!

J. What?

B. Laughs…he said he just killed a
man. Hadn’t stole a hog or nothing serious!!

J. Well, you know Mama used to just
worship her Uncle Monroe(sp??)… He wasn’t no kin to her.

G. Actually he wasn’t her uncle.

B. That’s what she said.

G. Well, he was a good old man!!

B. Well, who did he pitch for??

J. He married one of …

G. You know the……family that was all
deaf(??)…One of his boys killed a feller…and they tried him and he come
clear…..because the feller had called him a son of a bitch or some pet name like
that. Anyway, he got out of it, and he was scared all the time that they was
going to kill him. He lived about a block from us for a while up there, and
he’d come down there in the middle of the night…him and his family, scared to
death, and wanted to get behind something. Later on the woman he was married to…lemme
see now..

How this all went…. The woman he was
married to…

J. Her first husband had killed….

G. Her first husband was uh…anyway
she separated from (Dewitt ?)….and later on she married the ????

J. Him…the killer…

G. Later on she married the…

J. De Witt

G. Married the….anyway got it all
mixed up…we weren’t in that country during all that siege. That happened just
before we got there, and of course it was the talk of the community.
(SEE
FOOTNOTE C)

J. Well, Uncle Monroe was a fugitive
from over there.

B. Yeah…where did that happen??

J. He killed twelve men.

B. Where at??

J. Mississippi.

J. Well Uncle Monroe….he was an
Indian. He said people, when they couldn’t find anything else to do, they’d bash
Indians.

And he said ….TAPE GOES BLANK..RE-RECORDED
IN ERROR…ORIGINALLY IT SAID APPROXIMATELY…IN MY MEMORY.. a bunch of men rode up
to our place just before dark, and he began to hear shooting. He ran and hid in
the loft….

ACTUAL TAPE RESUMES

And looked down and saw that bunch
of good White Protestants shooting his family. He said he took a picture of all
of them and put it in the back of his brain, and…

G. They caught his daddy and hung
him.

J. And he said when I get grown I’m
going to kill every one of them..

G. Anyway, Uncle Monroe said, “By the
eternal gods, I’ll get em!!” That was one of his expressions.

And when he was 21, he had saved up
and bought himself the best horse that he could get. And one evening, he started
out late in the evening. And he rode to the first ones’ house, and called him to
the door, and shot him dead. Jumped on his horse and went to the next and called
him…shot him dead. He just made the rounds and killed every ONE of them!!!

J. Every one of them!

G. Then he put the spurs to his horse
and went to Texas.

J. He came to Aunt Mary Bakers, where
Grandma and them had decided to rendezvous, cause he was friends of theirs…(SEE
FOOTNOTE D)

B. What kind of work did he do??

G. He was a farmer….nearly everybody
was farmers.

J. Or a cattle man

G. Anyway, Uncle Monroe was a fine
old man. And we just loved old Uncle Monroe pretty good. He..

We had an old horse… it was a pretty
good old horse. But Uncle Monroe come up there one day and said to Poppa, “I
want to borrow your horse…I want to do a little plowing.” And Poppa said, “Well,
it’s as good a plow horse as you can find.”

So he took this mare of ours off
adown there, and he worked her there a while….but she was hard to catch.

You come up on her here in this
little corner and think you had her, and she’ d turn her butt to you…

And you couldn’t get around in front
of her. And she was …she was just as gentle as could be once you had the rope
on her.

But anyway, he was trying to catch
her out in the pasture…and she dived off of this bluff. He says I guess I’ve
got you now…. She was up on this bluff…he had her headed off there, and he just
hit her with the bridle to turn her around, and she just jumped off.

And jumped into quick sand… in this
creek and went down to around her belly. He couldn’t get her out and it scared
him half to death. But he came after Poppa and all the neighbors gathered up to
get old Maud out of the quicksand….and they got her out.

B. Well, y’all went back and forth
from Louisiana to Robertson county several times??

G. Well, they did….well, I did too,
because I was born there and then they went to Louisiana and Cotton was born.

J. And Poppa bought him(self) a movie
camera (Projector.)

B. Well, where did he buy the movie
camera??

G. I don’t know. But he told me he
had to pay their “weight in gold” for the film.

G. Their weight in gold.

B. Where were y’all whenever he
started this, though??

G. Well, it must have been up in
Robertson county… because…

Him and momma they fixed up this
little wagon and…

B. Was that before or after you were
born??

G. Oh I think I was born then. Any
way, they started across the….he would stop at the school houses.

B. But what towns did he go to??

G. He would stop at the school houses
along the way.

J. Anywhere. Momma said that one
time…he burned this carbide…it was a powder…

And it flashed and made a flash up on
the screen.

G. Well, it was just a light that he
used..

J. And she said that she ran…. And
they just emptied the school house. And Poppa scolded them, and said, “Come on
back, its safe. What did you run for??”

And one of them said, “that old Show
Woman ran!!!”

And Poppa said that broke up his
business. Mama said aint nobody gonna call me an old Show Woman!!

She was all of 16.
(SEE FOOTNOTE E)

G. Poppa….Momma was telling
about…they didn’t have hotels along the way. Anyway they stopped down there in
the Red River bottom. And was going to build a fire and cook. They’d camped by
the roadside by a branch where they would have water for the horses and also
water for themselves. And trees to get behind when they had to go behind one.

She said, “These plantation xxxxs,
they come by there, and they would look….. you know. One day they were down
there and Poppa had some kindlin ‘ gathered up… and had a little piece of
cotton, and he didn’t have any matches. He just took a glass, and was holding it
up here. You’ve seen that, magnifying it. He said this xxxx woman walked up
behind him, and she said, “What you doing there white man???” He said, “I’m
building me a Hell of my own.” Just about that time that thing lit up and she
said that xxxx woman took off running.

G. Another time, they was… maybe it
was the same place… I don’t know… she said these little xxxx kids were
standing around there. … she was cooking….dinner…She said she didn’t imagine a
kid ever had enough to eat… most kids don’t, you know… one of these xxxx boys
(pointed at another one) and said “ You know that whopper jawed devil would eat
right now if you’d ask him.”

J. Poppa said that one time it came
an eclipse, and he knew about it…thru an almanac or something.

But anyway, he said that the xxxxs
in the neighborhood was scared to death. They saw that the moon was messed up
and they came down there and said, “Let us stay down here with you.” They
thought there was some kind of magic.

Directly, Poppa said, “What IS the
matter with that moon??” One of them said, “It’s Clipsed!!” and Poppa said,
“Which one of you clipped it?? Nooo sir, they said, we didn’t clip it!!!
(SEE
FOOTNOTE F)

TRIP TO HUMBLE FROM ROBERTSON COUNTY

B. Uh you told me a story one time
about your horse dying in Spring.

G. Oh Lord goodness, that’s further
down the line…that’s when we made the Exodus from Robinson County…. Papa had
been sick for 3 years and hadn’t been able to work, and we WAS on the rocks.
When I say we was on the rocks…we was poor Poor. But me and Nubbin (Toyn) got
us a cotton chopping job.

Poppa in the meantime he took off,
….thought he was able to go…but he wasn’t. But he went…and he went to Humble.
And….

B. That was before the boom in
Humble, right??

G. It was during the boom. Big
boom. And he went down there and he wrote back that they was paying

three dollars a day for working in
the oilfield. And he hadn’t got a job but later on he wrote that he had took a
contract to jack up a house ..a ten room house..and build a story under it. And
he was gonna get Four Hundred and Fifty Dollars for it.!!

G. When Momma got that letter, she
said-- when he gets that much money , we will have a little anyway. We are going
… today!!

Well…meantime we’ d been chopping
cotton, and hanging on to our money and living on what we had…which was not
much. But anyway, Momma was thrifty. She‘d take care of money then--

That’s fore the kinfolks moved in on
us.

Anyway, she went to Uncle Monroe
…said, “ Uncle Monroe, I need a wagon.”

He said “Belle , you can have mine!”

Well, we had one horse …that’s the
old horse that had jumped off in the creek. That’s all we had then. Well
Grandma had one.

Mama told Grandma, “ I want to use
old Molly….to take us down there.”

Well Grandma sez, “Well, I’m going
too!”

J. Any thing for a trip with
Grandma!!

G. I tell you right now…that was the
crowning glory of the trip …for Grandma to be along!!

We was three days on the road. First
day, we got to Bryan. We stopped there…and they had a wagon yard there… now you
don’t know what a wagon yard is, but let me explain to you what it is.

J. It’s more like a motel.

G. It was where the country people
could come in to do their trading….and they would stay at this wagon yard, and
the merchants there furnished the … everything for them…and made it pretty nice
for everybody.

G. Well, anyway, we stayed at the
wagon yard that night …..(And) the next night we got to Navasota.

and they didn’t have a wagon yard
there, so we drove on out of town and got to the edge of a creek out there and
stayed there….

B. How old were y’all…about…??

D. Well lets see ..I was about 13,
I guess and Nubbin 15

B. So it would have been about 1915
that y’all were doing this??

D. Well, a little bit before, cause
we were there when war was declared…we had got to Humble and was established
when war was declared. ….(First declaration of war in WWI was July l914 in
Europe)

Anyway, we was going along way in
the night…we was trying to urge the horses until we could find a place. And we
come to one of them old bridges that was built like this (shows a hump with his
hands). They made ‘em like that then. And the horses tugged and strained to
pull up there, and then you ‘d go over here and you’d have trouble stopping
them.

G. Anyway, we’s going along. Me and
Nubbin was scared because we had just got word from Louisiana , where we had
lived over there, and they had started over one of them kinda bridges, and the
horses got scared , started backing up, and the whole wagon backed off and 11 o
f them was killed.

Of course we was scared!!!

Well, we started up that hill and we
was just trying to get the horses over it you know, me and him both…

They thought she had said whoa!
And Bob, I just panicked. I absolutely panicked … I DIVED outa that wagon and
got them horses by the reins and managed to stop the wagon and LED ‘EM over that
hill !!

And I’m telling you right now…..
Grandma was good at crap like that.!!

J. She was….(interrupted
…..again…by her brother).

G. We went on a little further and we
camped that night We just found a place and stopped. The horses were give out
and we knew it. We didn’t even have water for them. But we stopped there. It a
was a place we could put the beds down and all that and we did. And we slept.

And we woke up the next morning and
we was in the edge of a cemetery ( Laughs) And Grandma like to have went
crazy!!!!

J. She thought they would put a hex
on her!!

G. Well anyway, we got in the wagon
again and started off. Well, we had got to Spring…or nearly to Spring and we
was going along and the old horses…we had fed them oats….we had a wagon bed
full of oats. But the old horses…we was crowding ‘em …too much. And we was
driving along and all of a sudden …Kerplunk….and that old mare of ours fell in
her tracks….

Well she didn’t die but she was a
sick little girl.

G. So there we was on the road. So we
got out on the side of the road, and got the harness offa old Maud, and we
spent the night there. Well, the next morning we got up and it was a couple of
miles into Spring…and I think that I rode old Molly…the other horse…into
Spring…and we talked to a man…told him our horse had give out.

And in the meantime, Momma had made a
deal with the people there where the horse fainted to keep the horse a few
days...

So he come out there to talk to
Momma. He told her…I’ll put my horse in beside of yours and take y’all to Humble
for five dollars.

Well……Momma had the five dollars
alright…she'd saved that cotton chopping money…

G. We got in that wagon and went on
and we got to Humble. And Aunt Edna had give us directions on how to come to her
house and she said go to the Graces store….Go to the Grocery store was what she
intended for it to say…and we couldn’t find …we didn’t know where we was when
we got there.

So we went out to Moonshine Hill…and
this old boy was nervous about getting loose with his horse…getting his horse
out of it,,,, So we was driving along and directly Cotton said, “I saw Papa back
there at that house.” And that feller stopped the wagon and turned around, and
we went by there again. Sure enough it was Papa.!!

And that was as big an accident as
there ever was…us finding papa.

J. It was a boom on … Uncle Elbert
..

D. But anyway….he told the man where
to go. .. to take us down to Aunt Ednas house. That’s where he was staying then.

B Now that’s Aunt Ednie…Grandmommas
sister? (SEE FOOTNOTE G)

G.Yeh…anyway, we got down to the hot wells and
turned right down the river road which was the directions, and shore nuf, we
come to the house and there was another…

B.SIDE ENDS….

HUMBLE
TO HULL AND BEYOND

Begins with a recorded over gap….The
family in a wagon from Robertson County has arrived in Humble and is searching
for Aunt Ednas and Uncle Elberts Home….

TAPE RESUMES

J. when she got a whiff. She said I
know where we are. We’re not too far from Moonshine Hill. Said if you ever smell
Moonshine Hill with the oil boom …

G. Well, anyway, we got there to Aunt
Ednies…. And if I’d been Uncle Elbert and Aunt Ednie I’d have dived out the back
door and they wouldn’t a seen me any more! (SEE FOOTNOTE G) The way we come in
there…we just came in bad... and then Poppa was out there trying to keep a
bunch of men moving. And he’d borrowed jacks and props and things and he was
going ahead with it. We got down there tho, and we stayed the night there. And
then the next night, Poppa come in and he said, “Now this little house next door
here is Mrs Gilmartins.” (That was the woman he was doing this building for).
And he said, I’ve made arrangements to move in it, so we moved into it. But, of
course, bringing that much …..in that bunch of stuff we had in our wagon.. we
didn’t have a cook stove and we didn’t have…. Well, we didn’t have a Pot nor a
Window, did we Judia??

J.I didn’t hear much of the dealing except
tending to the little kids while Momma took care of the negotiations…..

G. Well, anyway..we moved in there
and in a day or two, we was established in our own house. Over there. I don’t know where we got
a stove..or whether we got one…

J. It was a kerosene stove…wasn’t
it??

G. I don’t remember. We’d been there
a day or two, or a week or something like that when Momma decided that we needed
to go get our horse over at Spring. Well, they had a taxi…had a jitney…you know
what a jitney is??? It was a Model Tee, two seated…. Car , and you’d crank it
and start down the road.

And we …uh.. went down there and
asked the man what he would charge to take us to Spring. Well,

he told us- and Momma had the money-
and me and her went to Spring. We got down there, and found our old horse…she
was walking around pretty good. Didn’t have a saddle for her, but I just put
the bridle on her and got on bareback, and started to Spring….about 14 miles
across there. Momma went on back in the taxi.

G. Well, I was nearly all day. Riding
to ….Humble. Rode on down there…. and we had our horse!!

Had about as much use for a horse as
a Hog has for a Holiday!!

G. So we had the horse around there
for a day or two, and Poppa … there was an old man down there that come up
there and wanted the horse, and Poppa said, “What you got that you’ll trade me
for it?” The man said, “I’ve got a house…tent house. Its’ got a tent over it
but the rest of it’s a house.” Poppa says, “Where it is” ?? and the feller says,
“Its over on the ditch.” Well, me and Poppa and some of us, we went over to the
“ditch”.

B. What was the “ditch??”

G. Ice plant ditch where the water
runs off……laughs…

So we got there, and Poppa looked at
it, and Poppa told him, sez, “I’ll trade you the horse for it.”

Alright. So he led the horse off,
and that’s the last we saw of the horse. And we moved into THAT place.

And we got in there and ….we lived
there THREE YEARS…didn’t we Judia??

J. I can’t remember, Glen.

G. You know I worked for Shorty
Rhodes, you remember ?? I got me a job…..

B. Was that the first job you’d had
???

G. No, it was not the first one…I’d
sold papers and I…..Any thing… I’d set pins at a bowling alley…Boy that’s a back
breaking job!! For a kid…… I’d get a nickel a game. And boy, you earned yore
nickel too if you want to know something. You’d bend over and pick up those pins
and set them on those spots…and you’d just give out…

G. Anyway, I worked for Shorty Rhodes
for four dollars a week…

J. And Toyn worked for Sid Westheimer….
He hauled coffins (Confused conversations here)

G. Any way, we both got us a job, and
it’s a good thing we did, because not too long later, Poppa

got sick again, and we had that on
our hands.

B. What kinda sickness did he have??

G. Son, I guess Poppa musta had some
kind of a ….I don’t know! But he passed blood.

G. You mean that hot springs….. that
wasn’t the one I’m talking about. The one over there by the ice

plant .. he had a pump on it.
Ludtke was the name of the people. L U D T K E And a .. they’d let us get
water there. And we’d carry the water, and Momma would wash…. and

B. What kind of a job was it that you
got??

G. Driving a dray wagon. He had a
one horse and he had a little wagon and he’d meet the trains.

Drummers would come in with trunks
and things. You’d pick up the trunks and take them to the merchants where he was
gonna display his stuff. And a… It was a pretty good job!! I tried hard to
make good…and I did make good on that job.

J. And Uncle Elbert…. He was a Dude!
And he came to Houston and got a job as a conductor

on a street car. And he had this
little old ticket puncher that would punch those little holes on the transfers.

But he was up in the … up in the…
Face Cards!! He wasn’t no common everyday laborer !!

G. But, what we was going to tell you
about him tho…they didn’t have any protection…they was right out in the open,
the conductor and the motor man, and he took pneumonia and died. And here comes
Aunt Ednie and her bunch down there to live in the tent with us.

G. Any way…we got there to Humble and
we got things to working. Then I got a job selling the Houston Press…that was a
little daily publication…six days a week. Give ‘em a half cent a piece for the
papers.

And I give 25 dollars for the
agency. And I got the agency with 26 subscribers…this old man had been doing
it…delivering it.

B. How much did you get per paper??

G. Ten cents a week. But we weren’t
supposed to get but six cents a week. And some of em would “Belly Ache””… You
would deliver a paper for a dime a week.. that was cheap enough but some of
them didn’t think so. Saturday, I ‘d get out….I went to school…I’d get out, and
take one of them papers and carry it down to this next door here, and I’d say
would you like to take the Houston Press?? They are just dime a week, and here’s
the news…..well, heck, I had six hundred and forty seven customers when I give
up the thing. And I had saved a little
money.

B. Did you sell the agency to
somebody else??

G. Yeah. Didn’t get much…I’ve forgot
what it was.

Anyway, while I was working over
there making all that vast sums of money, there was an ole boy

come down there, and he says, Glen,
would you like to own that old house of mine. And I said, Yeah, I’d

like too but I can’t buy that. He sez,
I’ll tell you what…if you want to buy it, I’ll sell it to you for $20.

It was a little four room house. And
I said, well I’ll see if I can get twenty dollars. And so I did get the twenty
dollars. And then I rented it for $20 a month!!

B. Why did the guy want to get rid of
it??

G. Well, he didn’t know what he had.
I don’t know, he’d gambled for it or something. Any way, then I bought another
house, and I was accumulating houses….I had three of them. And Poppa, they
just got

kinda dull there in Humble and he
wasn’t getting no work. He saw an ad…Kirby Lumber Company

wanted a carpenter to build a bunch
of houses at Lyric(?) Now Lyric is between Cleveland and Hightower out there in
them woods. He went out there and built it in by the sawmill.

B. Then ya’ll moved from Humble??

ON THE ROAD
AGAIN

G. We went to Lyric ?? (SEE FOOTNOTE
H) We went out there and Papa built the houses according to the contract, and
there we was again…stranded.

J. He was supposed to get a dollar an
opening. A door or a window, and they didn’t want to pay him for but one opening
for each house. He had to sue John Henry Kirby. He won that, tho, didn’t he
Glen??

G. Judia, I don’t remember the
details of it….I think he got his money alright.

G. Anyway, while we was living there,
the war was going on. Well, every thing was rationed and we didn’t work for
Kirby Lumber Co. The fellows that worked for Kirby…he had a commissary there and
you’d go down there and buy your groceries. Well that was alright if you had the
cash.

B. Or company script ??

G. Well, they had script, or punch
outs. And we would go down there and we would buy groceries. But we couldn’t get
sugar and we couldn’t get flour…they saved that for their customers… the big
shots. And we didn’t have a bite of wheat for three months…we didn’t have
biscuits. One day there was a lady come by and she’d wound her way out thru
them woods on a little dim road and went to Hightower, and said that they had
flour over there, and was letting it go six pounds to the person in the family.

J. And you had to buy an equal amount
of meal.

G. But that’s the way they did it. Me
and Cotton (his next youngest brother, Dee Harvey) looked the situation over,
and it was a long way over there. But we decided we’d try to go over there. And
Momma give us the money and we took off down thru them woods ….. six miles.

J. No road, no nothing.

G. Well, there was a half road. And
we went down thru there and we got over there and sho nuff they had the flour.
Well….it happened that that lady that had come by was there, and we told them
that there was ten in the family. That make sixty pounds of flour… and sixty
pounds of meal!!! Well, we bought the sixty pounds of flour, and put forty lbs
in one bag and twenty in the other one, and we set the meal out on the porch of
the store and we started home. Of course, I got to carry the sixty…I mean
forty…lbs because Cotton was littler than me and he was tired before we started.

G. Well we WAS tired! Anyway, we got
home and we had biscuits!!! Whew those were good biscuits!

But a few days later, Poppa said,
well, I got to go. Aint no work here.

G. In the meantime, Momma had a
cousin from Robertson County that had come down there to see if he could work
for Poppa. It was during the war. So he was there, and Pappa took off and Uncle
Lyndell (Lyndal?) went too. Well they went to Orange and they got down there
and somebody told them that Lake Charles the place to go as they was building
ships down there. It was during the war. And they went over there to (find
work)??

B. Y’all were still where then??

G. We were at Hull, then. We had
moved to Hull. Poppa, when he left and went to Orange….when he come back…and was
coming back, he stopped at Hull, and they had just made the oil well. And he
said there will be a bunch of people building little houses there and he’d get
the jobs. So he just proceeded to come on over there and said, “We’re moving to
Hull!!”

We hired a truck…a flat bed truck…it
was able to carry all of us!!! (Laughs) Judia, what did we do???

J. I don’t know!!

G. We went on that truck didn’t we??
Carried all our worldly possessions on it!! It wasn’t a van.. it was a truck.
We wound around thru there and got to Hull , and we stopped under a tree and set
up. I think we had a tent and we set it up and we slept in there, and would
come out on the front and eat our meals..

vittals.

And Momma began to get acquainted
with farmers in the neighborhood. And they would come by and say, “Mz Harvey,
would you like to buy a half a hog??” And she’d say well I can’t use that
much.

Well… I’ll tell you….if you’ll buy a
half a hog, I’ll let you have it for so much .

Well, she’d go out and look at it,
and talk…and first thing you know, she’d buy it. When Poppa come in, he could
cut it up and fix it up ….. economizing!!

He’d come in and they’d have a basket
of peas…he’d been peddling, and couldn’t peddle them out

He’d come back by our house…that was
on his way home..

J. And Momma would get on the train
and go to Beaumont, and buy a suitcase full of groceries.

We didn’t have a store.

B. Well, that’s one way of doing it.

GOING TO WORK AT A MANS’
JOB

B. Well, what did you do in Hull??

G. What did I do in Hull ??? I grew
up!! … and become a roughneck.

B. Well, who did you go to work for
first ??

G. Ice…I used to deliver ice…

B. In Hull ??

G. Yeah. See, they had them ice
houses that was setting right by the depot, I mean right by the railroad.

And they’d order that ice by the car
load, and it would come in and we’d put it in the icehouse. Then we would put
it in the trucks and in the wagons and …

B. Take it to whoever would buy it ??

G. Yeah … there would be a sign in
the window that said twenty five, so we would cut off 25 lbs and take it in
there and put it in the refrigerator.

DOORBELL RINGS……TAPE SHUT OFF THEN…

G. I tell you what now…that at Hull
we didn’t have any jobs there for a long time because…me and Nubbin was
undersized…and underage…and we wasn’t old enough to take just any kind of job.

J. Toyn had to register for the
draft…

G. Yeah. Nubbin had to register for
the draft…and was called, but he never left the house…they turned him back…

J. He got as far as Beaumont and
Peace came.

G. Yeh…Peace broke out. Anyway, we
got ….. and later on…

B. You were telling me about going to
work in the oilfields…how old were you when you got your first

job in the oilfields??

G. Well, pretty…I was pretty
young…but I had one…they was building a pipeline down there….

J. Momma and Daddy had to sign a
minors release…

G. No No they never….they asked me
how old I was and I said “Twenty One” and he said What year was you born and I
said well, uh uh…and he said I’ve got it figured out!! Just forget it…

B. Laughs…he knew you were under age…

G. Anyway, I went to work down
there. And worked down there… until I got laid off.

B. What was the name of the company??

G. Humble…

B. Oh, you were building a pipeline
for Humble…

G. Humble Pipeline…and then later on,
I went to work for a telephone company, there.

J. For who ??

G. A telephone company. I…I…worked
in a grocery store for a long time, delivering groceries.

B. Well, didn’t you tell me that you
had a hamburger stand once ??

G. Oh Yeah!!! That was another day,
wasn’t it Judia??

G. In Hull.. They built a schoolhouse
there, and I didn’t have any job and that’s before I went to work down there.
And we decided we would try to put in a sandwich shop down there. They didn’t
have any cafeterias or anything like that in schools. Poppa built me a little…he
built it for a garage …

J. It was about as big as this room,
wasn’t it??

G. Yeh, about this big. And I had me
a little stove.. an oil stove, and a griddle…and I’d never made a

hamburger in my life. But I got me
some buns and some meat, and cut up some onions. Them kids would just buy the
heck out of them. I done pretty good with it there. Any way, school was out
and I had to do something else then.

G. I got a job working for the
telephone company then. Worked for them a while, and then he run out of
work…..laughs… I got all his work caught up…

B. Yeah…worked yourself out of a
job!!

G. And he said, “I think maybe I can
help you get a job with the Magnolia Company.” So he did.

He got me on with the line crew with
the Magnolia Petroleum Company, and I went from place to place..

B. Doing what ???

G. Lineman..

B. Putting up telephone lines??

G. Yeah.

J. Tell him about the World
Championship fight…Carpentier and….

B. Said something about on the radio…

G. Oh that was..

J. Carpentier and who…Dempsey??

G. Dempsey…and anyway…I had a little
radio….one tube!! And had to put a lamp chimney over the ear piece and turn it
as loud as I could get it so we could all hear it. (Makes noises with his
throat…) crackling

One little boy sitting there said, “
Boy, Old Dempsey is laying it on him ain’t he ???” Laughs

B. When you went to work for Magnolia
on the line crew, was that before or after you got the oilfield job??

G. Before. I got my oilfield job
while I was a lineman. I was working.. a friend of mine-Connor Jerdan..

He asked old man Taylor about putting
me to work. He said you know Glen. He said, yeah, I know him

Not too good but I know him. Well, he
sez, he needs a job and …..

(As a lineman) I got six dollars a
day, which was more than I got roughnecking, but by the time I paid my board. …
…They didn’t give us traveling expenses or nothing. They would put us on a truck
and move

us alright, but uh…I just couldn’t
make a living at it. You would move into a place, and a dollar a day

board and room and sometimes it was
more than that….anyway we lived thru it anyway.

BECOMING AN OIL
FIELD NOMAD

Then I went to work for the Gulf
Company when I went back to Hull and stayed with the Gulf..

B. What were you doing for the Gulf
when you started??

G. Roughnecking …

B. On a drilling rig…was that your
first drilling rig??

G. Yeah..that was in 1924.

B. Down in the Hull field…

G. 1924…

B. Where did they send you from
there??

G. I worked there for a year or two
and they sent me to Stratton Ridge, that’s right out of Freeport

I was on a wildcat well, working for
George Devore, Judia. And we finished up down there and moved the rig to Egan,
La., and we went down there and made what well we made down there and we moved
from

there to Hancomer(SP).

B. Well, pretty much then, the crew
followed the rig…wherever the rig went, the crew stayed with it.

G. That’s right. We had…George was
the day driller…Bear Hide Smith was ….Cody Abshire I believe was the evening
tower driller and the morning tower driller I don’t remember right now.

B. So they had about 21 or 22 guys
making up a three crew shift then???

G. Yeah…they was a five man crew, and
then they had a time keeper…which was Henry Mass.

J. That’s when you got your finger
cut off, wasn’t it??

G. That was when I was roughnecking…that
was before I went on the wildcat well.

I had my finger cut off when I went
to Stratton Ridge. It was in 1927 that it got cut off.

G. Did I ever tell you about what
happened on January the 8th ???

B. Nah….

G. Well, one time me and Cotton was
out in the barn…that was when we lived in Robertson County.

We didn’t have any air gun nor sling
shots or anything like that, and didn’t have no rubber to make a slingshot. So
we was out in the barn…so we had made us a bow and arrow. I called it a barn…
but it was a crib…a corn crib. And rats
got in there and we was gonna kill ‘em. We get fixed with a bow and arrow…

So I had a hole back there where one
come in at, and I set me a nubbin of corn out about that far in front of it. So
…a…I was setting there waitin’ …I could see this ole rat just easing on out.
But just before I got ready to shoot old Cotton shot…and he shot MY rat!!

B. Did he kill it??

G. Naw!

B. But he scared the rat away???

G. Any way he shot MY rat instead of
HIS!! He had him a place fixed up there. When he did, I just turned around and
slapped the THUNDER out of him!!

B. Yeah , that’s what little brothers
get…that’s fair…

G. I said, “WHAT DID YOU SHOOT MY RAT
FOR???” He said he wasn’t YOURS’ ‘til he got killed!!

So I turned back around, and was
watching again. And in a minute, something hit me on the head!!

He’d picked up a nubbin of corn, and
he come down on my head like that!! And when he hit me, he Dived out the door,
all in one motion!!

And started hollering … OH HE’S
KILLING ME…HE’S BEATING ME UP!! And I hadn’t touched him

except to slap the thunder out of him
…And he run, and I dived out after him…and I could out run him and he knew I
could.

But he was Singin…hollering BLOODY
MURDER and he got out in the watermelon patch out from the house there. (Of
course the watermelons were gone by then) . And I overtook him out there. I
caught him and THROWED him down on the ground and was slapping him in the face
like this…(demonstrates)..

G. All of a sudden…POPPA WALKED UP
BEHIND US !! And Boy, he just whipped the heck outa me !!

And Cotton…I looked over at him and
he’s (shows how he was snickering)…But he HAD been screaming like I was killing
him !!

G. But Poppa just turned me loose,
and reached over and got Cotton, and tore HIM up!!

Well, later on that day, we was
talking and Cotton said…”we ought to remember this day for a long time

The eighth of January!! “ He said
“ We got a whupping didn’t we??” I said, I dang sure did!! Did you?? And he
said Yes I Did!!. And we were sympathizing with each other about getting
whipped.

G. But anyway, thru the years, the
Eighth of January has been my nemesis. Something has happened

On the Eighth of January yearly!I
got my finger cut off on the Eighth of January..and I got…uh…

I’ve been operated on FIVE TIMES on
the Eighth of January!! And I have been…and I took Butch in on the Eighth of
January…(SEE FOOTNOTE I)

G.You remember Butch staying with me ?? A
little boy that moved in here. I took Butch in on the Eighth of January.

J. Are they still living??

G.As far as I know. He come down here one day
with his suitcases. And I told him there wasn’t no use to have his suitcases
cause he wasn’t moving in with me!! Any way, then your momma and I separated on
the Eighth of January. One thing after another on the Eighth of January.

B. Well, where were you working when
you met Momma??

G. Luling…I’d been transferred up
there. They moved us around then. After we made that well (struck oil and
“completed “ the well) at Hancomer(?), they sent another supervisor in there to
take care of that. And George, he got rich off of it by getting him a partner
and sewing up some land (a oil well drilling option??) But I didn’t have any
backing and they transferred me to Luling …

G. Yeh, I went to Luling…actually, it
was Stratton Ridge…I mean Dorse (Doris??) Creek.

B. Well, I’ve heard them talk of
Dorse Creek.

G. Well Doris Creek was were your
Granddaddy lived…and he had built a little shack down there, and they was going
to take in boarders and get rich.[(Arch Calvin Martin and Florence Brand
Martin…with Oleta (my mother), Juanita, Francis, Christine and Dorothy Jean…my
aunts)]

B. What was he doing then…

G. Oh he worked for the Gulf!! Me and
Big Beaver Horton(?) and Earl er something….I just can’t remember.

B. That’s alright…

G. Any, we moved in down there in the
little house, and we would go up there and eat… And it was nice and a very
convenient thing for us. I had bought me a car. But Judia and Poppa had it.
Judia was doing the census….

B. That would have been about 1930
then??

G. That was right close. ,,,it had
done got to 1930 And I met your momma and a ….we…made a deal

Then I got transferred to East Texas…

B. To Greggton??

G. Naw…to Kilgore! Me and the old boy
I worked for …Bob Morton was his name. I was rough-necking for him then. They
told us to go to Kilgore and be there at seven o’clock in the morning.

Well, you could make it now with the
kinda cars you got, but you couldn’t then. So we loaded up in Bobs’ car and
started, and we got to Nacogdoches…just at the crack of dawn…and we eat
breakfast.

The next morning was the 23rd
of March…and we was coming along, and

I’d been off out there among them lil ole trees that weren’t as big as nothing—that had dirt on them and all
that…..

And then ( to see) them big old
Stately Pines along the side of the road…and occasionally look out through there
and see a dog wood in bloom…

And I said, Boy, I’ve come Home!!
Cause I was raised over there in North Louisiana ..they had plenty of that kind
of stuff over there…and I just liked it!

I’ve been gone two or three times
since then…but its been because I had to go on a job. But when I finally wound up, I was awfully glad
to get back to Kilgore!! I Like It !!

B. Uncle Debs said that he worked
with you over there around Greggton, didn’t he…or he was working there while you
were there too??

G. Well, Debs…yeah he was there some.

B. Well, let me see if I got the
thing straight. You were living …or working around Greggton when I was born ??
Right ??

G.Yeh, Yeh.

B.And Momma went back to Luling …or back to
Dorse Creek and went to the hospital in Luling to have

me, right??

G. Yeah.

B. And we were living right next to
Uncle R J (Shaw) and Aunt Faye,(Grandma Martins Sister) right??

G. There at Greggton.

B. Well, how long did we stay at
Greggton??

G. Oh we stayed there about a year I
guess.

B. And then where did we go??

G. Don”t crowd me.. will you??
(SEE
FOOTNOTE J)

B. Well, I was just trying to
remember myself, and naturally I can’t…

G. We went back to Overton and worked
over there a while and then, we went from there to Bogota.

B. So we went from Greggton to
Overton for a while and then to Bogota and

B. Well, you were in Overton when Bob
was born…tho…before we went to Bogota??

G. Yeah…

B. So how long did we stay in Bogota??

G. Oh I think about a year or a
little better.

B. And then we took off and went
where???

G. Ever where!! We went to Houston
and we worked out of Houston there…drill a well and then come back to
Houston…drill a well, and then come back to Houston. I worked at Fairbanks, and
I worked at El Campo…

B. Was this for Gulf or for Housh
Thompson??

G. Housh…

B. Then you left Gulf while we were
in Bogota and went with Housh Thompson??

G. I left (Gulf) to GO to Bogota..

B. I can remember…in Goliad…because
that’s when I started school. Because I was too young to get in the public
schools and y’all started me in that Catholic school. But I had been in
kindergarten in both

New London and Houston. I can
remember having graham crackers and milk at that school in Houston.

G. That was a lucky break wasn’t it??

B. That’s just all I can remember
about it…it wasn’t important.

I know that after Goliad, we move
around a whole bunch there for a long time…back and forth to Louisiana…Chaneyville
and….

J. Y’all lived in some town called
Sandia…

B. Yeah, now that was later on…Sandia
was…

G. Sandia was after I had that spell,
Judia and was in the hospital for so long and couldn’t work

And they let me go down there and
watch a rig, at Sandia. Sandia is right out of Mathis down there. Not far..

B. I remember Sandia well…I remember
us catching that big ole 75 lb gar and giving to those Mexicans out across the
prairie, and them cooking it and baking it down in that pit!!

G. Yore momma would’ve died if she
hadn’t of got to go over there and see how they was cooking it!!

They dug a hole…and built a fire on
top of it, Judia..

Put this gar down in the hole and
built a fire over it. And then, he’d take the skin and lay it back, and

they’d eat all that was done. And
then he’d cover it back up and put his fire back over it. Oleta asked

him…why didn’t you fry it?? He …said
Don’t got any shortening!!

J. Said what??

B. Laughing…Didn’t have any
shortening!!

Well, we will do this again sometime,
but right now, I’m going to turn this off.

REGRETFULLY, WE NEVER DID DO IT
AGAIN…wah

FOOTNOTES

Footnote A.
Aunt Judia is convinced that her Grandmother was a first cousin to Jefferson
Davis. (Her parents were of course Davis’). However, checking Jefferson Davis’
charts, it shows that his father was an only child with no brothers. It follows
that he could have had no first cousins actually named Davis. I believe that
both Aunt Judia and my father Glen Harvey heard this when children and
mistakenly believed it to be true.

Aunt Judia was
crippled by a stroke and confined to a wheelchair, living at my home when the
Bosnian troubles were occurring (as well as at the time of this taping). The
idea that the Holbrook who went to Bosnia is in some way related to the
Holbrooks in our family line has to be pure speculation. It may be true, but the
odds are very greatly against it and even if true the connection would be
extremely remote.

Footnote B.
Apparently there were several Anderson families in Robertson County. Grandma
Martha C. Holbrook Watsons’ sister Sarah is shown in the records to have married
Polk Anderson in the late l860s

Just a few years or months after the
Holbrooks arrived in the area. They had a lot of children, all of whom are my
Grandmother Isabelle Suzanna Watson Harveys’ first cousins. The Guy that Glen
Harvey is referring to as saying “my daddy killed that man”may or may not be
from this bunch of Andersons.

Re-reading of the transcript also
shows that he could possibly be referring to a Guy Hardin.. which would also
make him a cousin of Isabelle Suzanna Watson Harvey if he was a son of Robert
Hardin.

Dad told me a story once about an
Anderson that all the children he played with believed to be a pirate with gold
hidden in the woods…and I’m pretty sure he was not talking about Uncle Polk
Andersons family, but another group of Andersons in the county. It isn’t really
relevant, as I would be glad to be related to either bunch !! Better yet…both
bunchs.

FOOTNOTE C.
Apparently there was a couple of killings in the county just before John W and
Belle Harvey returned to Robertson County. Glen and Judia Harvey were trying to
tell the story but seemed very confused on the tape as to who shot who and why
…and who married who and why. It would be interesting to find someone in
Robertson County who might shed light on this happening.

FOOTNOTE D.
Have been unable to identify “UNCLE MONROE” in the census records for l860 thru
1910, but I did not get his full name, or if Monroe is spelled correctly, or if
Monroe is his first or last name. In any event, Uncle Monroe seems to be a very
strange fugitive, especially if he did in fact kill 12 men back in Mississippi.
From the conversation on the tape, we get the impression that the story was told
to them as children by Uncle Monroe himself, or from adults who had heard it
from him. But if he had killed 12 men and was a fugitive…why tell anyone at
all?? Why come to a place in Texas where people who came from Mississippi who
knew him were living? Why not change his name and head for California…or places
unknown?? Even if he did kill 12 men, he seems like a nice man.

FOOTNOTE E.
Glen said he believed he was already born when the movie wagon business was
operating. However, Aunt Judia says that “She was all of 16” when the business
broke up. One of these is not correct, as Glen was born in 1902 and Grandmother
was 16 in 1896. I personally believe that the movie business actually took place
before Glens birth, but later than l896…but who knows??

Also…I do not believe carbide is the
substance that caused that flash that frightened the audience. Carbide and
water gives off a gas that will burn brightly, but I don’t believe it will
flash. (I understand though that the old film itself would flash brightly if it
was burned…but again, who knows ?? )

FOOTNOTE F.
The last three or four paragraphs involve stories told by my grandmother and
grandfather to my aunt and to my father about incidents they considered amusing
about the “xxxxs” they encountered in the late l890’s. Strong consideration
was given to not including these in the transcript for fear that some offense
would be taken by those reading this today. However it is important that the
story these two people told be reported honestly and with all the warts and
prejudices showing, as well as all the good qualities that show through the
tapes. The prejudices of my grand parents clearly show, and it is clear that
they partly continued into the generation of my parents…and this is probably
true in all Southern families whose grandparents and great grandparents were
here during the Civil War. It should help those of us with children and
grandchildren of our own to realize what a thoughtless legacy we can leave to
them in just our attitudes and beliefs.

The same reasoning applies to
“Policing Their English” and their pronunciation which all sounds awfully
country. Both were much better educated than it seems on the tapes, and I think
they both must have been trying to stay in character for the narratives they
were making. True, Glen only attended school thru about the 8th
grade, but he had a very good self taught background (He tried to help me with
my calculus when I was in college, but I managed to flunk out anyway), and Aunt
Judia graduated from Mary Hardin Baylor, went to Austin and got a law degree
(she never practiced), and was an Inspector for Hughes Tool in Houston from 1942
until the 60s. On the other hand, this IS the way we used to talk in a gathering
of the Harvey clan, particularly with Belle Harvey around.

Besides this is the way they wanted
to tell it and this is the way it has been transcribed. (I cheated a little here
and there.)

FOOTNOTE G.
Aunt Edna (Watson) Goodman Benefield was a few years younger than my
Grandmother Isabel Watson Harvey. They were sisters. Her name was spelled EDNA,
but everyone called her Aunt Edknee.. She had three children (that I know of)
Lavelle, Lorene and Nell. On several occasions, the Harveys stayed at her house,
and on others her family stayed with the John Harveys. I remember at age 5 or 6,
Aunt Ednee had a small house in Hull, just down the railroad tracks from Grandma
Harveys house, and she was still living after Grandma Harvey died in l952. After
Uncle Elbert Goodman died, she married a man named Benefield, but I don’t
remember him at all.

FOOTNOTE H.
The name of this town (?) (community ??) is very difficult to hear on the tape,
and it does not appear on the map… and might not ever have BEEN on a map. In any
event, someday as an expedition I will make a trip to Cleveland to attempt to
find the place.

.

FOOTNOTE I.
In the 1950s, long after I had left home, Daddy and Eunice (my stepmother) took
in a young nephew of Eunices’ whose mother had died. His name was Butch and we
called him Butch Powell (Eunice's maiden name), but that was not his real last
name. Apparently Dad and Butch did not see eye to eye on matters of behavior and
discipline…and after Butch discovered that Daddy was bigger than he was, he
finally left. It was not one of Glen Harveys’ favorite episodes!!

FOOTNOTE J.
This tape, as I have related elsewhere, was done in 1996. At this point, these
two older

folks had been talking into the
recorder for over an hour and a half. They had been hinting at stopping for some
time…particularly Aunt Judia…as we still had a four hour drive back to Houston
that day. But there was still so much ground I wanted to cover that I tried to
extend it as long as I could. It was at this point in the tape that I could hear
“quit” in Dads voice. You can almost hear me trying to hurry on the tape after
that.

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